1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a suspension which supports a magnetic head for reading/writing data from/to a storage medium such as a hard disk drive.
2. Related Art
A magnetic head suspension has a configuration that the magnetic head suspension moves in a seeking direction (radius direction) on a storage medium such as a hard disk drive to thereby be shifted from a loading state where a magnetic head mounted thereon is positioned above a target track of the storage medium at a certain floating amount (for example, 20 nm or less) to an unloading state where the magnetic head is spaced apart upward from the storage medium.
In particular, a magnetic head slider is, in the loading state, kept above the storage medium at a certain floating amount by means of a balance between a pressure of an air membrane generated with the rotation of the storage medium and a magnetic head slider pressing force by load bend portion of the magnetic head suspension.
Upon shifting from the loading state to the unloading state, a lift tab provided at the tip end of a load beam portion of the magnetic head suspension engages with an inclined face of a ramp, whereby the magnetic head slider is separated upward from the position of the certain floating amount.
Accordingly, the lift tab must have rigidity capable of resisting against a force required for pulling up the magnetic head suspension.
Further, the lift tab is also required to reduce the mass.
That is, the lift tab is positioned at the tip end of the magnetic head suspension. Accordingly, if the thickness of the lift tab is increased and/or the width of the lift tab is enlarged so as to secure the rigidity, a mass increase in the tip end of the magnetic head suspension is caused, whereby the resonance characteristic and the shock resistance of the magnetic head suspension are deteriorated.
As described above, although the lift tab is required to secure the rigidity while effectively suppressing the mass increase, there is no magnetic head suspension capable of satisfying such a demand.